The Bermuda insurance market remains strong, despite the departure of a number of holding companies and C-suite staff from the Island in recent years, says XL Re CEO Jamie Veghte.Global business insurer XL Group is now based in Ireland, having moved its holding company there from the Cayman Islands in 2010.Since that move, several key executives, including CEO Mike McGavick, have relocated from Bermuda to the US.Key executives with Ace and Allied World also relocated out of Bermuda when they shifted holding companies to Europe.“I’m not sure it’s had a significant effect,” Mr Veghte said in an interview at the Rendez-vous reinsurance get-together in Monte Carlo.“Using our own company as an example, yes, there has been some shift of senior management personnel.“Having said that, we have two market-leading companies there, XL Re Ltd and XL Insurance (Bermuda) Ltd.“They remain very strong presences in our long-term plans.“So I don’t believe there’s been any significant weakening of the Bermuda market just because a few holding companies have left.“The strength of the Bermuda market has always been in the creativity, the cutting-edge analytics, the underwriting personnel that’s been attracted to that market and that remains unchanged.”Mr Veghte himself was based in the Bermuda market for nearly two decades, having arrived with Mid Ocean Re, the first of the post-Hurricane Andrew start-ups, which launched in November 1992 and was later acquired by XL.“The emergence of Bermuda as a market that I’ve been exposed to is a very gratifying thing,” Mr Veghte said.“It’s one of the trading hubs for international reinsurance in the world and remains a very strong centre.”Mr Veghte also spoke on the state of the market and said it was too early to give any credence to the notion being suggested by some in Monte Carlo that rate reductions were likely at year-end because of the lack of catastrophe activity in 2012.“We’ve had a reasonably benign year so far, but we’re still four months away from the end of the year,” Mr Veghte said.“If we have one benign year, then it doesn’t mean that rates are necessarily going to go down and that’s what people are speculating.